Yeh well the focus is on the 8 core CPU but we know at very least there will be a 4 core high end cpu too. This will no doubt have a higher speed.
But yeh I guess we will just have to wait and see how they all perform. Hopefully get more info at CES.

Downloading just now.
Man I need faster broadband. Even at 80Mb/s still going to take an hour haha.
p.s the Live Show was terrible.
And important bit if you missed it.
"New! Crusader is currently disabled so that players can focus testing efforts on Arena Commander and Star Marine."
Thought my install was broken until I read the release notes

Command have a good idea about Imperium fleet numbers but wont make them public or available to members for various legitimate reasons.
They might be able to give a "rough" idea though. We did once have a recruitment image which gave numbers but that is quite old.
As for the game on the whole, only CIG knows. They don't release this info, they probably don't see the point and might figure that displaying numbers could hurt sales.

I have 0 intention of getting this. I hope its ridiculous in a bad way so my intentions stay true.
But $425.....I'm eager to see what it is and why it is so expensive. Current guess is its going to be fairly small but the fact it is from Esperia is the reason for the price tag.

How about this?
It was made by a CIG employee and shows off the Starfarer with some great shots. Its obviously only one ship but is great if you want to show life on board a large ship in SC and it is pretty much up to date.

Which is surprising as CIG has said a few times that the Carrack is next after the Caterpillar. Its almost guaranteed that it will get bigger though.
The Freelancer variants were missed from this roadmap too.....I want my MIS!

Amen. I'm absolutely sure being a crew on big ops, the odd scheduled org mission and when helping out a buddy now and then will be fun but lets be honest this is probably going to account for what 10% of your time? The rest of the time we are going to be wanting to do our own thing in our hard earned ships.
NPC's are a necessity but we will see. There is a loud minority who want to be the only capital ship captains on the block by convincing CIG to push multiplayer play and restrict solo players.
Personally I just wanna cruise the galaxy in my 890 when and where I want without having to invite common folk to man my stations haha.

The NPC situation will make or break the game. In reality I'm not sure what CR's plan is but with 90% or more of the player base being solo players he will need to cater for them.
I'm guessing a hard limit for NPC's will be applied along with NPC cost and effectiveness levels. With different NPC capability levels I'm assuming this will be reflected in the cost which will allow players to run a cheaper skeleton crew at a risk.
They don't want to price solo players out of the game by forcing extortionate prices for NPC's onto them. Nor do they want to penalise light gamers who don't have abundant amounts of friends they can call on.
Still having real people i.e friends could be cheaper/free, more fun, more effective and allow you to more fully man a ship (if NPC hard limits are applied).
In respect to 6x single seat ships v 1x 6 person ship the only way I can see to balance that is to allow larger ships shielding/hull to withstand tremendous amounts of small arms fire making it ineffective to use smaller ships against larger ships. This could result in an arms race...bigger = better. But this could be offset by cost/risk and jump point sizing etc.

Yes as a coming up to $3000 backer they deserve the criticism. They need it. Yes they probably are having abit of a shitty week in the office seeing all the remarks but they will get over it and it should allow them to focus more.
I expect to be blown away by the next reveal and they know it.
When's the next livestream? Christmas?

Well the USS Independence is clearly designed for speed with aspects of radar cross section reduction but with versatility in mind. We aren't really sure how fast the Polaris will be, stealth is abit of an unknown in SC just now and the Polaris as it stands certainly isn't what I would call versatile, atleast certainly not out of the box.
The Independence has anti-missile defence and a surface to surface cannon, both of what the Polaris doesn't have.
They do both share a hangar though but the Independence has the capability of launching 3 craft to allow for reconnaissance, anti-submarine and anti-surface tasks. It is likely that the hangar on the Polaris will allow for a single craft of which you will need to choose which suits the mission best.
The Polaris key feature is definitely its torpedo bays. It gives it a massive punch but only against relevant targets.
In my honest opinion the Polaris isn't a corvette. Its a bomber, a big one. I see it as some kind of weird cross between a Superfortress with its heavy payload, lots of turrets to defend itself but ofcoarse lack of missile defence and a large torpedo boat such as the German S-80 which is fast with packs a number or torpedo's designed to damage larger vessels, most likely by working in a pack.
As mentioned before its a big Retaliator with a hangar...
On a separate note,
I really wanted something like the Khareef-class Corvette which is basically a highly modern mini frigate. Limited everything but it does have everything. Versatility/price is key to a lot of Navies these days.
Or perhaps like the Flower-class from WW2. Cheap and quick to build. End result was a fast, lightly armed but still capable ship that was built to commercial instead of military standards. They were built in civilian yards which meant the big naval yards could keep pumping out frigates, destroyers, battleships etc. Again it was what was needed at the time.
If we delve into the lore side of SC we can easily justify a Flower-class Corvette. The UEE is under pressure on the front line and at home. The Vanduul are putting pressure on the border regions and they need every military ship they have to keep them at bay. This leaves gaps at home. What are they going to use to police trade routes, borders with the Xi'An and Banu, escort convoys etc? Sounds like a job for a corvette, don't want to waste valuable Idris's on these tasks.
And at home we have the Senate and public opinion waning. Budget cuts on the horizon. A cheap budget warship is exactly what the UEE needs. A versatile ship that can defend itself and others against fighters, missiles and torpedos but can hit back with a heavy punch when provoked.
I'm not entirely sure this is what RSI/UEE have delivered. That is my opinion ofcoarse and there will no doubt be more "Corvettes" in the verse. My hope though is that they differ from this bomber design